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Dumping ISP May Cost Customers $150
Dumpling$9 writes with a link to an article that seems to speak volumes about the modern consumer relationship with service providers. IBT reports on the outrageous fees facing users who drop their internet service contracts before they are up. "Pricing broadband competition can be difficult. Broadband is rarely priced as a stand-alone service. Whether offered by a telephone company or a cable company, it is usually bundled with other services such as voice and video. The advantage to the customer is easier billing and usually a price break. But the down side is if they drop one of the services to pursue a better deal elsewhere, they lose the discount ... It remains to be seen whether penalties for Internet customers will cut down on churn. Consumers Union in its annual cell phone survey found that nearly half of all cell phone subscribers who were considering switching carriers were deterred from doing so because of early termination penalties."
Yeah...sucks. This is a "duh" story. Of course, you don't have to sign a contract if you don't want to, and just pay more in the short term. This hasn't been news since Ma Bell was broken up.
I don't respond to AC's.
So, in summary, if you sign a contract which has a clause which requires a penalty for early termination, service providers charge you that penalty. Duh!
The business is very competitive, and there are lots of incentives to switch carriers. If you're not renegotiating with your cellular and broadband carriers when the contract comes close to ending, you're unwise.
I don't excuse the size of the fees, but they will be disclosed if you ask the terms of the agreement. Don't want to pay a fee? Don't sign up, or don't break the agreement.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
You have a choice of cell phone carriers. You don't have a choice of internet service providers. You have whoever has a monopoly on your phone service in your region and whoever has a monopoly on your cable service in your region. If you terminate your service early, exactly where are you going to go?!
Fuck this. Just a further attempt to fuck the consumer over.
Don't sign up for a contract you might want to break out of.
If you do sign up, then don't bitch about your own stupidity.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Your ISP is subsidizing the cost of equipment instead of charging you an up-front sign-up fee. If you leave, your monthly payment is no longer paying that off. It makes perfect sense.
It stinks that we can't get it for free, but that's the way it works.
"Basically, we are charging the (early termination) fee to regain what we have been giving the customer for free," says Bobbi Henson
Dear Bobbi,
Please look up the word 'free'. Ig you give someone something for FREE, then you have nothing to regain.
OTOH, if you leased someone something you may have a point.
In other words srop using the word free when something is not free. Perhaps someone should give you a christmas gift, and when you through it away when your done, charge you a 200 dollar termination fee?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's easy to get your ISP to drop you.
download a lot of non-copyrighted material (you don't want to get in trouble) off of a file-sharing network. they will get rid of you and you won't be responsible for the disconnect charge.
easy.
Note: In case of monopolized areas, none of this applies.
Every contract I have ever had with a cell phone provider or internet provider or cable provider had a set expected length of contract AND a set date when that contract would be terminated. I may be mis-remembering, but I'm pretty sure NONE of them have been over two years. In EACH case there was some sort of incentive to get a lower price and some sort of incentive to switch carriers. Many times the switch incentive is enough to pay for the termination fees, if any.
It seems to me that if you sign a contract with a company for a couple of years, you were paid to do it with a lower price. If you want to cut and run, you pay and should. This is not anti-consumer, this is stupid-consumer who didn't read the contract and now wants to bail ahead of time.
It's the same with 'bundled' services. They are always trying to get you to 'bundle' everything with one carrier. You take them up on it at your peril. If you never bundle services you keep your versatility intact. yeah, it may cost you more, but are you sheep and go ga ga eyed every time they offer you ten bucks?
Don't get me wrong. My Starband sucked so bad I dumped it the month my contract was up. My Dish Network was so bad and the customer service so God-awful I fired them on the spot and threw the dishes in the dump. But I'll tell ya, my DSL is so reliable and fast that it's worth my while to sign a contract. Absolutely no problems.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
don't despair.
You may have done this already, but find a Not For Profit credit counsiling, they may be able to get verizon to drop the fees. They can also help with credit cards. They basicallt call the credit agency and they work out a plan.
Every case is different.
In my case, I didn't have to pay car payments, credit payments, or a home mortgage for 6 months. Yes, the car and mortgage payments were put at the end of the loan, but even then it was a life saver. We didn't have to much on credit cards, so we eventually got that paid off and never got another one.
Do it today, now...right now.
It was a year of finacial hell, but if I didn't go to that credit counsiling I would be in a lot worse shape today.
Just be sure it's a not for profit company, and if you have to paty them anything, leave. Find another. You don't need more payments.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Because consumers tolerate it, and the government doesn't regulate it.
Ideally, in pure capitalism, consumers would either be savvy enough to see through these 'deceptions', or at least principled enough to refuse to purchase from merchants they deem to use deceptive business practices.
It's a trade-off between consumer protections and free enterprise.
And you're still on dial-up, then?
Seriously, I can't get anything faster without going to a national company.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Wow, is this a DSL FUD campaign?
I work for a support outsourcing company. I've worked for three different cablecos and there are three more here right now, included in that six are all the major players (Time Warner, COX, Comcast). Not one of these six do not offer cable modem service as a stand-alone service. Also, except for special bundled pricing arrangements, all of them are month-to-month (no contracts).
Where are these mythical cable companies that force your to take video service and have contracts? Sounds like AT&T and co. are trying to draw parallels that don't exist between their refusal to sell naked DSL and their standard contracts vs. cable internet.
The problem is I know Verizon has contract-free DSL service, and I'm sure they offer service without phone included as well.
To me, the idea of signing up for any kind of contract for internet service with no quality-of-service guarantee is just stupid.
The reason for the excessive churn is simple: poor customer service, and poor billing policies to prevent it. To stop it, all companies would have to get together and agree to these rules.
The way things are right now, the standard promotion is 6 mos-1 yr, and there is a 1 mos-3 mos waiting period for a new full promo. All that does is encourage "promotion hopping". Throw in the standard free installation and customers will happily jack-knife between providers each year so they're always on a promotion. If they call and threaten to cancel, they can many times get a temporary price cut that is close to what new customers get.
This all sounds great to customers, but it can mess with the market as a whole in terms of what the "standard rate of service" is. Many people think that broadband service is too expensive in the U.S. compared to what you get in other countries, and I'm not going to get into that, but when it's so easy to get a discounted price for service the very term "regular price" becomes meaningless. If broadband providers want to keep their customers around, they are going to have to work together so they eventually are stuck paying the "market rate". Once you have people having to evaluate service based on what the providers think its really worth, you're going to see some changes in what's considered acceptable service for the price and what the price is. Right now the people who lose out are the ones not on promotion who are having to subsidize the huge numbers that are on the provider's balance sheet. Customers who don't call and bitch about their bill every week should not be penalized like this.
"Ideally, in pure capitalism, consumers would either be savvy enough to see through these 'deceptions', or at least principled enough to refuse to purchase from merchants they deem to use deceptive business practices."
...
Indeed, that's the ideal situation. In practice, this becomes impossible and there is a strong need for governmental regulation. If, e.g. I want to choose an ISP, there are the following (possible) variables to consider:
* mail service
* mail scanning (free, not free)
* helpdesk
* news service
* binary news service
* monthly fee
* setup fee
* run my own server
* server if you are a business
* geeky features (home mail server with backup, shell access)
* mobile phone access
* wifi access
* well, you get the point, glad you made this so far
*
For an average consumer this is simply too much to handle. It's like going to the supermarket and having to check each and every good-until date for each and every product that you buy. It's like having to check on the internet what food product uses good or bad embalage for the environment.
There has got to be stronger rules in force, both to protect the customer, and in this case, to have better competition. Capitalism fails if these anti-compatitative measures are allowed to take place. Just relying on the consumer is bound to fail - even if there was choice.
"The point is, you have to stand up for your rights as a consumer."
One way to start is to refer to yourself as a customer, not a consumer. A customer is a person; a consumer is a metaphorical mouth that is always hungry for more and can't say no.